Box Office Dies. Nightcrawler Shoots It.

Amir here, reporting to box office duty. It was a dead weekend at the multiplex, deader than the dead in Ouija, deader than zombies. Though it was not, strictly speaking, the worst weekend of the year – that honor belongs to the weekend of September 5th, when Guardians of the Galaxy, in its sixth week, topped the chart and the biggest new release was The Identical, a musical with Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd!!! – it was still a terrible weekend.

 

TOP DOZEN
01 NIGHTCRAWLER $10.9 NEW
02 OUIJA $10.9 (cum. $34.9)  
03 FURY $9.1 (cum. $60.4) Michael's Review
04 GONE GIRL $8.8  (cum. $136.6)  Jason's Review
05 THE BOOK OF LIFE $8.3 (cum. $40.5) Interview
06 JOHN WICK $8 (cum. $27.5) Michael's Review
07 ST. VINCENT $7.7 (cum. $19.5) Michael's Review
08 ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE... $6.4 (cum. $53.6)
09 THE JUDGE $3.4 (cum. $39.5) 
10 DRACULA UNTOLD $2.9 (cum. $52.8)
11 THE BEST OF ME $2.7 (cum. $21.9) 
12 BIRDMAN $2.5 (cum. $5) Nathaniel's Review

Nightcrawler, the critically acclaimed crime film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, opened at the top spot, but at the estimated $10.9m, it’s the lowest grossing new release to top its weekend in this entire decade so far. By all accounts, the film deserves a bigger audience, but the number isn’t exactly a surprise because a) Halloween weekend is never a great time for non-horror films and b) Gyllenhaal hasn’t really opened a film big on his own. The other new wide release Before I Go To Sleep with Nicole Kidman finished outside the top ten with 2 million. Birdman, still platforming at 231 screens now but almost cracking the top ten, maintained the best screen average for the third weekend in a row. It will surpass Iñarittu's own Biutiful and Amores Perros in total sales sometime today. 

UP NEXT: November will bring us some of the year’s biggest box office hopefuls. Here are each week’s major openings for the remainder of the month: Interstaller and Big Hero 6 (7) ; Dumb and Dumber To (14);  Hunger Games: Mockingjay (21) a sure bet to take Guardians of the Galaxy’s #1 of year throne; Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2 (26) -- oh, c’mon you know you’re waiting for this one! More exciting times are ahead.

What did you watch this weekend?

Nicole's Return. The Dates Are Ever Changing.

When will our beloved Kidman return to us? For someone who works so consistently, doesn't it seem like it's hard to find Nicole Kidman in a movie theater? Grace of Monaco keeps threatening to arrive but never does leaving us to wonder if it will ever play in regular movie theaters after its shaming at Cannes (that place can be brutal). Any big dreams for the quality of Paddington (it comes from charming source material at least) her Christmas film, have been dashed by that hateful slapstick trailer and Colin Firth's exit as the voice. The wait is soon over though. For those of you who missed The Railway Man in theaters, it's just out on DVD and Blu-Ray. [Warning: Nicole's part is small enough that when the climax arrives, she's literally a blurry figure in the background.]

 

Next up though is the thriller Before I Go To Sleep which has a new poster (above) and a new release date: Halloween to be exact. Let's just hope it's better than The Invasion or Trespass. (It's apparently really hard to make a good thriller post-Hitchcock because not that many filmmakers are skilled at making them.)

After that picture all us Kidmaniacs will wait again for her other completed films to play the release date shell game. Most promising by far is Werner Herzog's Gertrud Bell biopic Queen of the Desert both because Herzog is an amazing director (another feather in Kidman's auteur-fetish cap!) and because the role is big and central. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Queen of the Desert is doing the fall festival circuit so maybe they're waiting until 2015?

CAST THIS!
This is one of those stories that was so obviously a Film Experience type of story that I pretended to myself that I'd already covered it on the blog. Like those dreams you have where you already went to class or work so there's no need to jump up and go when you wake up! Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are now attached to the film adaptation of Liane Moriarty's comic best seller Big Little Lies about a group of three mothers whose kids are in the same Kindergarten class in a beautiful Australian seaside town (with secrets, natch). A sprained ankle sets off a series of events which eventually leads to a school riot and a murder. There are three major characters (and apparently a lot of broadly drawn but possibly scene-stealing supporting casts). No word yet on which of the moms Nicole & Reese are planning to play but obviously a third star will be joining them.

These are the characters...

Madeline: gleefully extroverted, fashionable, and still a "glittery girl" at 40. Her broken Dolce & Gabbana heel sets the plot in motion. She's happily married but still having trouble with her ex and his younger "new age-y" wife
Celeste: a nervous very beautiful mom with twins, who is married to a wealthy man
Jane: shy, plain and uncomfortable in her own skin. New in town but Madeline and Celeste befriend this single mom when her son gets in trouble the very first day of school

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO PICK THEIR ROLES FOR THEM AND ADD A THIRD ACTRESS IN THE COMMENTS!

Let's just pray this wasn't doesn't go the way of The Danish Girl which Nicole was attached to for quite some time until development hell took it from her plate. The film is still trying to get made but instead of an actress in the transgender lead role it's now Eddie Redmayne with his Les Miz director Tom Hooper guiding him through the transformation. 

Yes No Maybe So⁴: Before The Skeleton Tribe Goes To Sleep at St. Vincent's

Hooray. It's time for our weekly dose of hypocrisy. Less than 24 hours ago I suggested you abstain from trailers, and here's a post with not one... not two... not three... but four trailers for you to binge on. It's all for our communal 'Yes No Maybe So' consideration.

Three-pronged thoughts and the trailers to The Skeleton Twins, St. Vincent, The Tribe and Before I Go To Sleep are after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Say What: Nicole Who Never Sleeps

This might sound strange to y'all given the common knowledge that I am a Kidmaniac but I have real trouble keeping up with her career. Lately it seems as if the Aussie/Nashville goddess lives, eat, drinks, breathes acting and exists not outside of film sets. In addition to the potentially high profile releases like the troubled Grace of Monaco, the children's film Paddington, and the biopic Queen of the Desert (which I wholly suspect will find a distributor since Werner Herzog movies are good and it has three famous men in support: Robert Pattinson, James Franco, and Damian Lewis) and the just announced Genius and Family Fang,  there are two more obscure titles on the way which both released stills this past week. One of them I hadn't even heard of and I pay attention! So here are two images for your "say what" amusement. Add dialogue or caption in the comments for a chance to win a walk-on part in Nicole's eighth 2015 release*

Joseph Fiennes & Nicole in "Strangerland"

Nicole in "Before I Go To Sleep"

After the jump, the winners from the last Say What contest!

* this is not a real prize.

Click to read more ...

Colin + Nicole

I woke up like this, wondering what's going on with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman and/or their agents?

People aren't talking about this yet because the movies haven't arrived and also, undoubtedly because both stars are so prolific that it's hard to keep track of their upcoming deals. But three of their next handful of releases are together. They're husband and wife in The Railway Man (opening in April) which is largely Colin's film. Then they're nemeses in Paddington (opening in December) in which Colin is the voice of the title character and Nicole the villain. And at some point (no release date yet)  they're back to being husband and wife again in the thriller Before I Go To Sleep in which Nicole plays a woman being treated for anterograde amnesia who doesn't realize she's married or has a son.

Will Colin & Nicole do a fourth? I feel they must. In their two films in which both actually appear, Nicole is brunette or blonde but you haven't really co-starred with Nicole Kidman unless she's a redhead.

That's the rule. 

Kidman and Firth in "Before I Go To Sleep"

Though frequent pairings have a rich history in Hollywood, it went out of fashion sometime in the modern era. (Maybe franchise culture killed the desire for it, since there is so much repetition in other ways?) Frequently co-starring with the same person just isn't that common anymore outside of auteurist filmographies that use the same actors a lot in different permutations (Cooper & Lawrence & Russell lately). It's not even common when we want it to be (I'm still waiting for Brad & Angie to follow up Mr & Mrs Smith you know? And despite several indications over 25 freaking years that Pfeiffer & Bridges wanted to pair up again it never happened). It's not even common to continue even when all of the pairings are big hits (Turner + Douglas and then Hanks + Ryan quit after only three).

Who do you wish would be reunited onscreen? Will Colin & Nicole do a fourth? Stay tuned.